Vojtech Novotny - Selected Publications#

Volf M., Segar S.T., Miller, S. E., Isua B., Sisol M., Aubona G., Simek P., Moos M., Salminen, J.-P., Zima J., Rota, J., Weiblen, G. D., Wossa, S. & Novotny V. 2018. Community structure of insect herbivores is driven by defensive traits with contrasting evolutionary dynamics: the role of trait escalation and divergence in Ficus. Ecology Letters, 21, 83-92.
Resolved plant-herbivore food webs with information on plant secondary chemistry and phylogeny demonstrated that closely related plant species are less chemically similar than they should be, probably as a response to herbivore pressure in rainforests.

Segar, S. T., Volf, M., Isua, B., Sisol, M., Redmond, C., Rossati, M. E., Gewa, B., Molem, K., Dahl, C., Holloway, J., Basset, Y., Miller, S. E.,, Weiblen G. D. & Novotny, V. 2017. Varyingly hungry caterpillars: phylogenetic predictions of host use for herbivores in lowland rainforest. Proc R Soc B 284, 20171803.
Plant-herbivore food web with phylogenetic resolution for both plants and herbivores that allowed us to progress from documenting food webs to predicting their structure, based on the contingencies of plant and insect phylogenies.

Roslin, T., Hardwick, B., Novotny, V., Andrew, N., Asmus, A., Barrio, I. C., Basset, Y., Boesing, A. L., Bonebrake, T. C., Cameron, E. K., Dattilo, W., Donoso, D. A., Drozd, P., Gray, C. L., Hik, D. S., Hill, S., Hopkins, T., Huang, S., Koane, B., Laird-Hopkins, B., Laukkanen, L., Lewis, O. T., Milne, S., Mwesige, I., Nakamura, A., Nell, C. S., Nichols, E., Petry, W. K., Prokurat, A., Sam, K., Schmidt, N. M., Slade, A., Slade, V., Suchankova, A., Teder, T., van Nouhuys, S., Vandvik, V., Weissflog, A., Zhukovich, V. & Slade, E. M. 2017. Higher predation risk for insect prey at low latitudes and elevations. Science 356, 742–744
Globally replicated measurement of insect predation using artificial caterpillars documented increasing predation pressure from temperate to tropical forests, caused by higher activity of arthropod, but not vertebrate, predators.

Novotny, V., Miller, S. E., Baje, L., Balagawi, S., Basset, Y., Cizek, L., Craft, K. J., Dem, F., Drew, R. A. I., Hulcr, J., Leps, J., Lewis, O., Pokon, R., Stewart, A. J. A. & Weiblen, G. D. 2010. Guild-specific patterns of species richness and host specialization in plant-herbivore food webs from a tropical forest. Journal of Animal Ecology 79, 1193–1203
First study synthesizing data on plant-herbivore food webs for a wide range of herbivorous guilds; estimated local rainforest diversity at ~10,000 herbivore species coexisting on 200 tree species. 134 WoS citations, "highly cited in field” in WoS.

Novotny, V., Miller, S. E., Hulcr, J., Drew, R. A. I., Basset, Y., Janda, M., Setliff, G. P., Darrow, K., Stewart, A. J. A., Auga, J., Isua, B., Molem, K., Manumbor, M., Tamtiai, E., Mogia, M. & Weiblen, G. D. (2007) Low beta diversity of herbivorous insects in tropical forests. Nature, 448, 692-695.
Challenged the common wisdom that rainforest species have restricted geographic ranges, found that large alpha diversity combines with low beta diversity, reducing thus exagerated estimates of regional tropical insect diversity. 147 citations in WoS.

Novotny, V., Drozd, P., Miller, S. E., Kulfan, M., Janda, M., Basset, Y., Weiblen, G. D. (2006) Why are there so many species of herbivorous insects in tropical rainforests? Science 313, 1115-1118
Phylogenetically standardized comparison of herbivore host specificity between temperate and tropical forests demonstrates that once phylogenetic diversity of plants is taken into account, there is no latitudinal trend in herbivore specialization. 271 citations in WoS. Google Scholar Citation Classic [https://tinyurl.com/] in Arthropods in 2017 (10 most cited papers in past 10 years).

Novotny, V. & Basset, Y. (2005) Host specificity of insect herbivores in tropical forests. Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, Biological Sciences 272, 1083-1090
Review and meta-analysis showing that tropical insects are mostly specialized to plant genera, rather than species, and thus able to feed on multiple alternative hosts in most tropical forests. 171 citations in Web of Science

Novotny, V., Basset, Y., Miller, S.E., Weiblen, G.D., Bremer, B., Cizek, L. & Drozd, P. (2002) Low host specificity of herbivorous insects in a tropical forest. Nature 416, 841-844
Insect herbivores in the tropics are not as narrowly specialized as ecologists commonly believed, and that this leads to severe reduction of global insect diversity estimates, from 30 to 6 million species. 384 citations in Web of Science

Novotny, V. & Basset, Y. (2000) Rare species in communities of tropical insect herbivores: pondering the mystery of singletons. Oikos 89, 564-572. Exploration of why are there so many rare species in tropical forests. 281 citations in Web of Science.